Sortie Release - Info

With some people reporting that they are killing it from behind, and with weapon skills, but not getting the metal I watched your video for the spell interruption. You pulled with Flash, it began casting Flare and interrupted as you ran out of range.

To be clear, my wild theory upon the porcelain throne this morning was that the compass would be the enemy, and therefore what direction you attack him from would be the proc (i.e. if the enemy is facing the tank, and the DD fights the enemy from the front, you are attacking it from it's south side).

The test to the theory would be to go fight Ixion and attack it from Ixion's left flank (i.e. Tank holds the mob, the DD's move to the right to attack Ixion's "East" side because he is in the "East" zone of G).

If if find an opportunity to test it tonight I will, otherwise I'll have to test it tomorrow

We killed with Leaden from behind today, no metal

time to break out the ol' day of the week crafting compass

E Botulus further confirmation.

RUN/SAM/COR/BRD/WHM/RDM.

RUN in front, everybody else behind. Iceday. Fudo/Savage/Leaden/Sanguine/Dimidiation spam. Everybody touched him including WHM with Dia2. Got chest. I'm overjoyed.

So if the run was in front and did ws then is it just killing blow from behind or everyone tag? Everyone but run did ws from behind I assume so this kinda needs that last part figured out still sounds like?

Do you have the combat log or a screenshot? Did you interrupt the Botulus?

Since the RUN did WS as well i guess its a, more WS from behind than from front, type deal.

Since killshots alone from behind apparently do not count.

I doubt the everyone touching him is a thing, i think someone disproved that no?
Edit: re-watched ruas video, the WHM does not touch him.

I'm looking back over the log. I made no attempts to prevent his spells or TP moves. I pulled with Flash on RUN and he immediately cast Burn on me which got off.

I made a few stray Darknesses in the midst of WS spam.

He did indeed die to a Tachi Fudo, but I wasn't aiming to kill him mid-cast or mid-TP move. He was doing neither when he died.

My first test was merely "everybody touch'em, everybody but tank is behind" and that worked out. If that didn't work out, I would've tried both those conditions PLUS killing during TP/spell cast.

I also notice that both that JP blog and some other testimonial here mentioned Sanguine Blade, so I peppered that in for some spice.

About the Salamander. I didn't want to believe it, but I will concede that the best way to kill the thing, even with the Metal, is kiting it (even without Gravity 2) and using Trueflight. I thought that the Metal would facilitate Savage Blade spam dead in 60 seconds, but that was not the case. I had SAM/COR/BRD chasing it using Impulse Drive and Savage Blade and that WS wall is still stiff. I managed to kill it in about 10 minutes, but it was not a good time.

Yea im gonna assume the same thing if run ws then like you said maybe it's just more ws behind than in front its not everyone touching it as we've been doing that already like you said.

So Botulus fun fact: That thing has some vicious party hate. Pulled on blu, forgot to put up blink and aquaveil, so it kinda killed me a little. And then it ran over to kill my geomancer way over on the other side of the room, who hadn't done anything since entering the hall.

So... entered on Lightsday, breached hall E on Lightsday, pulled on Lightsday using Paralyze, used Flash Nova exactly once, used Entomb and Burst Affinity where available, Blaze Ecliptic Geo-Malaise and Indi-Refresh, Occultation and Erratic Flutter once. Even faced myself and Botulus east. Replicated my previous attempt as closely as possible, in other words.

The only points of difference were that it used Stun instead of Quake (and this completed casting, but got resisted.) The fight finished on Darksday instead of Lightsday. I don't think I got HP Down from its melee attacks this time. Obviously, the two deaths on the floor. And... I stood my geo behind it for the entire fight, and moved my blu behind it for the last two spells.

No chest.

We've seen parties with trusts get this so trust positioning can't be important. Just killshot from behind is dead in the water. Rest of party behind, player with top enmity in front? Majority of damage done from behind?

Also did a little testing with Bitzer F. Entered hall with reraise on. Checked, nothing. Retreated to a safe spot, removed reraise, applied it again. Nothing. Approached from north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, southwest, at distances between 0.5 and 1 yalms, 1 and 1.5, 1.5 and 2, 2 and 2.5, 2.5 and 3, 3 and 3.5, 3.5 and 4, 4 and 4.5, and 4.5 and 5 yalms. None of these 64 interactions yielded a chest, so I think we can call distance and direction done.

I've been posting a few times the last 24 hours, including a combat log from my success. I am more and more convinced that the proc trigger is interrupting a spell cast, via killing it, stun, silence mid cast, or out ranging the spell and having it interrupt. I have seen an example of all 4 of these instances, with a successful chest upon killing.

I am continuing to test this theory tonight, but I am operating under the belief that my interrupting theory is the success for the chest. I have yet to see someone post obtaining the chest without interrupting the botulus spell casting during combat.

I am here to tell you that I did not interrupt, silence, or even out-range the first spellcast. I got the chest.

He opened with Burn, it landed on RUN. About 30 seconds later he cast Drain which got off and drained 44 HP from RUN. He did not cast again before he was dead. He did 5-6 TP moves, none of which were stunned or interrupted in any fashion.

I've been looking through the posted combat logs, screenshots, and videos as I am able to see them, all of them have the commonality of an interrupted spell. In one instance, posted back on page 81 or 82 I believe, their chat log did not actually log the interrupted spell (there was no message of the interrupted spell in their chat log) however there also was no completed spell message (I believe this instance was Flare, and there is no Flare damage in the log). I wouldn't fully rule out that you did not interrupt it based on this information.

Again I'm just operating off of the logs posted by others. I would gladly pour over your example you mentioned here if you have it.

Good veela strat. Pull 1-2 fire eles to the veelas TP on them, WS on veelas. No dispels.

I normally outrange his first spell, never gotten a chest, i feel that if that would be the trigger, we would have seen more chests from the get go since that is normally the initial impulse when pulling a mob.

Would think work on dullahans if you TPed on hounds? ^^ seems like wouldnt mitigate it entirely but maybe a bit?

I think my last try debunks that actually. I forgot until seeing interrupts mentioned, but I did cut off a Blaze Spikes with Entomb in there. Guess it's a lucky thing that it wasn't a winning try.

This is good data Zenion, I'll continue my searching to see where the common denominator is here.

I got a feeling some people aren't directly behind him and aren't getting it because of that?

If metal does remove the WS penalty, that is huge

I just find it hard to believe that that's it. I had my two non-trust party members basically on top of each other, and the botulus was locked down so it couldn't move. Couldn't ask for a cleaner "stand behind the thing" setup than that, and yet... there it wasn't.

And again, like... we've seen logs with trusts, and heard testimonials besides, and it's pretty much impossible to control where trusts go or what they do, so those can't be factoring into this, so it's still... if the goal was "kill it with everyone standing behind it" that would have been an A+ 100% clean clear.

Too many people have been getting the chest after killing from behind, so I feel like there's got to be a correlation there, it's part of the answer it just isn't all of the answer.

If we go off the jp blog hypothesis that it's something involving the puller and someone else, we'd get, say, whoever pulls it has to either be in front, or be the one to kill it, or maybe they have to be the one to kill it from behind. Last test would have tripped on "puller kills while party is behind" and "puller kills from behind". "Puller stands in front while party is behind" is plausible I guess, if nobody's tanking for all the cors and rngs we've seen getting clears? I'll give that a shot the next time my testing tags are up.

Majority of damage dealt from behind might be plausible. Two heavy spike DDs swapping enmity back and forth and alternating weaponskills could easily do that accidentally. But wow, that would really suck for soloers, wouldn't it? But then, I guess SE was pretty convinced this wasn't going to be soloable content.

It would be nice if direction and facing were a little easier to pick up off of screenshotted log windows, but instead we're stuck with what people notice and remember doing the fights, and that's really hurting here. Even if we're close, this is going to really suck to nail down.

EDIT: You know what would have been, like, really, really helpful? One of those nice !! effects. If things are going to be this arcane, we really need to know exactly when we've gotten them right in a fight.

I wonder what the difference is between Kujah and I's Metal'd Dhartok's.

I have a log full of severely gimped Impulse Drives and Savage Blades. I tried to straight tank him until I noticed my WS's weren't cracking 5k. After I saw that was probably not worthwhile, I bailed and kited. Maybe Light damage makes it so he continues to take unmitigated damage?

I'm pretty confident that the metal does not remove the WS wall. However, the WS wall mechanic is either buggy and sometimes fails to nerf a subsequent WS, or there's more to it that we don't understand. Below are some screenshots of WS's going off very shortly after each other (note the timestamps), both doing full damage on Aita (zone H boss), without the metal. The occurrences are not common (maybe 1-in-6 WS volleys, this happens) - the majority of the time, the WS wall, as we understand it, applies.

Were Rayke/Gambit up for this window? That might explain the high Trueflight damage. Was it consistent throughout the fight?

I mean heck, maybe "WS in unison" IS the gimmick. I'll be back for more Dhartok science tomorrow.